Insufficient Funds: How to get those fees refunded
Last month, the wife and I tried a new money-system which included more sharing than before and much less in our own bank accounts. As a result, I misjudged what I had spent. This, coupled with two automatic payments coming through overdrew my account.
I haven’t overdrawn my account in years. But I did, and I quickly noticed in because I log on to my bank fairly often. I technically overdrew it three times, but each of these were for under five dollars. The total damage that Chase assessed? Ninety-Six dollars! You read that correctly. I had overdrawn a total of under ten dollars but they assessed me over ninety. It was outrageous. Especially because I have a credit card at Chase, a joint and a shared savings account, and a joint checking account. There was a LOT of money sitting around in these accounts – in part because we’ve been sitting on Brittany’s student loan and a small summer surplus. But did they take out credit on my card or credit my savings account? Nope. That wasn’t in their interest. Free money is in their interest, so that’s what they went after.
I immediately transferred money from my other accounts to cover this and then sent off an email to Chase. It was strongly worded and I insisted that they refund me these ludicrous fees, and I let them know that if they didn’t I would transfer all my accounts and my wife’s to ING, which I’m often tempted to do anyway.
Days later, and still no response from Chase except that someone would be following up with me shortly. But then, I was on my bank website and noticed extra money in my account; they returned the fees. The entire amount. And all I did was ask… and sort of threaten.
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Martinique Miller lives in Chicago with her partner, Brittany. She writes a personal finance blog with her two sisters, called Thrifty Sisters where they share their success with money.
Photo credit: stock.xchng.
Something I heard this morning on NPR’s “Marketplace Morning Report” that seems related and worth sharing:
If you have relatively LITTLE money at a bank or financial institution, the bank will generally view you as a “client” — that is to say, one of many.
If you have a LOT of different ties to a bank, (e.g., loans, accounts, lines of credit, etc.), the bank will tend to view you more as a “partner” largely because of the damage you could do to the institution.
Hi,
I subscribe to your RSS feed and always find interesting the intersection of certain aspects of my life, such as your blog intersecting my financial viewpoints and my being gay. 🙂
I wanted to comment on this posting.
My philosophy on financial matters is: contracts are agreements between parties and if everyone goes into them with full awareness of the contract and its terms, then each party can hold the other fully accountable to the contract. If one party chooses to waive the others responsibilities, then that is also fair.
You have a contract with the bank in regards to fees. Its your responsibility to know your agreements and hold up your end. We may not always like the one-sided nature of business negotiations, and with certain industries (such as banking, house buying, etc.) we take what we can get.
The reason I bring all this up is: I think your “strongly written” email “inisting” they refund those “ludicrous” fees is the wrong way to go. You may want to intimidate, but that’s not a fair approach at all. If they were acting legally and ethically, i.e., not breaking a banking or consumer law and honoring the contract, then you already had a say in this scenario, when you signed the contract by opening the account and agreeing to the fee structure.
I would think it would be better to let them know you would appreciate them waiving the fees, refunding the money, and that you would like to continue being a customer but without these concessions you will have to look elsewhere for banking services. You could also mention how you want to be able to recommend the bank to friends and on your blog, but without these considerations, you just couldn’t do it.
You should honor the contract you had, but don’t be afraid to ask for them to waive some of your obligations, to their own longer term benefit.
I’m just saying…
I’ve noticed that banks (or at least those that I have been using) no longer let you link your checking and savings accounts so that if you go over it just comes out of your savings. Instead I get offered a line of credit or outrageous fees for insufficient fund payments.
I agree with you Robert that polite is always preferable, but most of the time it gets you nowhere. I had to threat to leave my bank just to get them to knock off sending me email spam – simply requesting to be unsubscribed was unsufficient.
You should check-in with your Chase banker — they will provide you with automatic overdraft protection. This will transfer the needed funds from one of those other accounts that are more generously deposited to cover whatever amounts you overdrawn on your checking account.
There is no reason why you should ever have overdrawn charges when you have significant funds on deposit with the bank.
I would urge you to check it out. It eliminates the need for asking or threatening altogether in those rare situations where you miscalculate.